Next year we hope that the Mad King turns them all into skritt.
— Jonathan
Beyond eliminating the primary problem with the Clock Tower, this also creates justification for implementing strange and pro-social mechanics. The skritt are a hive-mind species, so skritt content should be nigh-impossible solo and potentially trivial in a zerg.
Imagine a path with occasional shinies. They draw skritt or their attention, turning the camera or attracting the character like gravity. Reduce that effect based on the number of nearby skritt, so that one skritt would be be forced to look at the shiny (and maybe zooming in) while a group would be mildly distracted. Imagine if having other skritt around made platforming easier, with platforms treated as wider and inclines less steep on the basis that the skritt are clambering over each other like fire ant rafts. How about “as long as another skritt within a meter of you is within a meter of … a skritt within a meter of a surface, none of the skritt involved can fall”? I don’t know how well any of these would play out in practice, but as opposed to the content where you want everyone else to fail within the first 30 seconds, the skritt are the perfect race for developing mechanics that encourage or require helping your friends to the finish line.
: Zubon
Halp! I’m falling! Hold my tail!
I got you, I got y- OOOH SHINY!
Yes, I do not think ArenaNet should back away from communal, event-based jumping puzzles. If anything, as this idea strives to show, the jumping puzzle should be used to reinforce community within it. Good idea!
Being able to clamber over other skritt would be cool.
Considering how much people whine about the one annoying, poorly placed rock screwing up the positioning in the beginning leg of the Clock Tower, and complain about fighting against the camera in general, I can only imagine the rageposts that would spring from taking control of the camera to look at shinies.